In the early 2000's, advertising to mobile phones evolved. The early advertising models broadcast advertisements to mobile users via short message service (SMS) ad campaigns. These models are based on application-to-peer ad delivery.
Some advertisers offer mobile users subsidized wireless communication in exchange for willingness to receive their ads. In this regard, recent US and international surveys have discovered that a main challenge for user adoption of mobile advertising is the intrusive nature of ad delivery.
To date, mobile advertising has been missing the main source of wireless data traffic; namely, the peer-to-peer market. Peer-to-peer communication accounts for more than 80% of SMS traffic, but this traffic is hidden from content providers and ad agencies. One of the constraints on the wider use of the SMS is the limit of 140 bytes worth of data. With a currently used GSM 03.38 alphabet set, supported by most SMS-centers (SMSCs) and SMS gateways and taking only 7-bit per character, 160 characters can be fitted into the length of the message. Typically, however, a large percentage of SMS messages include free, unused space within this standard size allotted for SMS.
Some prior art systems insert advertisements into peer-to-peer SMS messages, but this insertion takes place by interception of incoming messages at the signaling layer of the wireless communications network. However, interception of incoming messages at the signaling layer for insertion of advertisements has some drawbacks. Communication at the signaling layer is visible to service providers but is hidden from the content providers and ad agencies. Thus, advertisers have difficulty inserting ads into messages and subsidizing communications in exchange for ad placement. Also, intercepting messages at the signaling layer requires significant modification of the core network architecture and leads to redundant infrastructure as to existing messaging centers.
Additionally, many prior art systems insert advertisements into recipient outgoing messages in peer-to-peer communication. This method, however, also presents some drawbacks. While the objective of mobile advertisement is to subsidize part or all of the communication services cost by displaying ads to subscribers for using the services, in many prior art systems, the advertisement is delivered to the recipient instead of the sender who is the subscriber to the service. Such a method allows the advertiser to subsidize the receipt of the message, but often times, the charges for sending the message is greater than the charge for receipt, which is often times free.
Efficient coding and space allocation are of great importance in next generation wireless networks, which are expected to handle various types of highly demanding multimedia users. It would thus be beneficial to have a mobile advertising model that leverages the peer-to-peer communication traffic, increases its efficiency, and that provides a non-intrusive user experience.